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Transcript of Art, Community and Consciousness: The Black American Oral Tradition

Art, Community and Consciousness:The Black American Oral Tradition WARNING: The following quotes you are about to see have come from the ill and twisted minds of your very own classmates. Please express your offense. “Many people who are supportive of rap….make the mistake of categorizing quality according to politics” (40). Therefore, who wins in this case? Is it the rapper with the deep-political lyrics and the boring song or the artist that seems to be rapping about absolutely nothing of value but can have the whole crowd singing about "pretty boy swag?" A radio interview released last week revealed rapper Ice-T dissing Soulja Boy deeming his music 'garbage'. Soulja Boy responded with a video posted on YouTube in retaliation calling Ice-T T "old as f*** and claiming that Ice-T had only dissed him as a pathetic publicity stunt. "Soulja boy is fresh as hell and is actually the true meaning of what hip-hop is supposed to be," West wrote on his blog. "He came from the hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song. He had all of America rapping this summer. If that ain't hip-hop then what is? Kanye West Artists like Lil Kim & Foxy Brown seem to only rhyme about wealth and come across as extremely materialistic. Perry asserts that the fact that a black woman is able to express these materialistic values transgresses “racialized space” and “racialized gender,” because these women are shifting society’s perception of where black women belong in society socially and economically (45). “While I’m spendin mills, Signin all kinda deals, I’m a 5 star bitch, Eatin 5 star meals.” "Why does the hip hop audience believe that it is ok to embrace the past, to converse with it, without adhering to its ideological divides or rules?" The answer, I believe, is that hip-hop takes the good and leaves behind the bad, constructing, no composing, a new product. I found Perry’s analysis of “gangsterism,” incredibly fascinating. She asserts that the gangster has become a commercial tool whereby artists perform the role of the gangster in order to become more popular (and in fact many prominent artists get arrested after their rise to fame because of this). BREAKING NEWS: LIL WAYNE ARRESTED FOR MARIJUANA POSSESSION! Hip hop and Socrates were cousins. Signifyin(g) is praised for it's “suggestive and subtextual critique, an expression of cleverness rather than overtness (Perry 60)”. Through what would be applauded as Socratic irony for most (less controversial) works Signifyin(g) is a core part of the interpretation of hip hop. So really, society has been played by hip hop and just like Plato in Plato's Symposium. They're just mad that they are keeping themselves in the role of the antagonist. Through Composition, Emcees, Narrative, Exhoratoin/Proclamation, Description, Battle, Allegory, and Realism hip hop is so drenched a literary artform anyone wishing to defend it against societal norms has a plethora of justification for the art of hip hop. Geneva Smitherman offers her list on eight features of hip hop narrative and solidifies it's place as elemental literature: 1.indirection, circumlocution 2.Metaphorical-imagistic 3.Humorous, ironic 4.Rhythmic fluence and sound 5.Teachy but not Preachy 6.Directed at person or persons usually present in the situational context 7.Punning, play on words 8.Introduction of the semantically or logically unexpected. But what need is there for set rules in an art form defined by a culture of defiance?